


these streets are yours

by usoverlooked



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Canon Related, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-02-11 15:46:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2073882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usoverlooked/pseuds/usoverlooked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Britta works Tummy Tuesdays, Jeff is jealous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	these streets are yours

**Author's Note:**

> for an anon who made a Star Wars reference in requesting this and asked for jealous!Jeff. I hope this satisfies you, anon!!!  
> (Also, title from the Bastille song where the lyrics are "even if we won't admit it to ourselves/we'll walk upon these streets and think of little else" which is v. Jeff/Britta)

Jeff has absolutely no room to comment. He knows that, as he watches Britta climb up on the bar for Tummy Tuesday. She rolls up her shirt to the line of her bra and Jeff looks down at his scotch, swirls it in the glass. He still listens though, to the frat boys as they cheer and smack the bar excitedly.

See, the thing is, he has no right to be mad. Britta is his friend. Possibly his best friend – and only _partially_ because Shirley’s too busy with her shop and her kids to listen to him whine about his job - it's mostly of Britta's own doings. But she's just that, just a friend. Besides, he doesn’t have to come on Tummy Tuesdays, he knows that too. Now he looks over and she’s sliding off the bar, collecting a bill from one of the guys. She grins at him, holds up the bill – a goddamn twenty – and looks triumphant. He holds his scotch up, his usual toast to those of victories of hers.

He watches as she stuffs the money in her tip jar – already mostly full. She’s impressively good at bartending, the perfect balance of therapist and flirt, he’s noticed. It hurts him in some petty way when the others comment on it. Like it should belong to him somehow, pride in her. The last time that Troy was here, he made the mistake of complimenting Britta. Jeff spent the next hour making snide comments about Troy’s haircut and life choices, until Britta slammed a scotch down in front of him and glared so hard Jeff felt transparent. After, when he and Troy were walking out, Troy had clapped him on the shoulder and told him, voice comforting, that he wasn’t going after Britta – that Jeff didn’t need to worry. Jeff skipped going to the bar for two weeks after that.

Now his self-imposed ban was up and Britta was carrying some wells of beer over to a table. He watched her, wondered if she ever questioned why he showed up so often - nearly every other night. Then he watched as one of the guys at the table handed her his cell phone. Britta smiled, typed something in the phone. Jeff turned back to his scotch and tipped it back, draining it in one gulp.

He orders another from the other bartender, a surly guy named Arnold. When Britta comes back by, her smile dims as Arnold slides the scotch to Jeff. He stares at her, half-hoping she’ll comment. Instead, she takes his empty glass and takes it back to the sink. Arnold chuckles and if he wasn’t twenty-five and muscle-bound like the Hulk, Jeff would have told him to shut it.

“You’re sulking,” Britta observes when she returns. Before he can reply, her attention is caught by a girl down the bar. She holds up a finger, hustles down to the girl. Jeff finishes his scotch and leaves his money under the empty glass. He heads out the door, ducking past a pack of younger people that are excited about bars in a way that makes Jeff feel impossibly old.

He’s fumbling for his keys when he hears the bell – an actual bell, pilfered from some old schoolyard he’s certain – over the door. Turning, he finds Britta. Her arms are crossed and her face is twisted in what Pierce always referred to as her sourface.

“Are you pissed at me for something?” She asks, sounding tired more than mad. He fiddles with his keys for a second, looks everywhere but her. When he breaks and looks at her, she looks older than he remembers her being. Not in a bad way, just in a way that surprises him, that she’s aging too.

“No,” he admits. Her arms uncross, fall to her sides. She’s going to say something, and Jeff walks towards her, watches as she figures out what to say. He should admit more, that he’s mad at _them_ , those guys in there. Or that there’s a better word for what he’s feeling, closer to a green monster that’s been growing somewhere in him since she walked into class holding their friend’s hand like it was nothing.

“Well, you’re being a dick,” she says simply. It does it, breaks whatever he’s holding back.

He kisses her, because for a man who always knows how to talk his way out of things she always makes him fail at that somehow. For a half-second, he worries she’ll push him away. Instead she fists her hands in his jacket, pulls him into her. The bell sounds again and she jerks away. A pair of girls practically fall out of the bar and Jeff turns back to Britta, catches her biting back a smile.

“I’m-you have _shit_ timing, Jeff Winger,” she says and steps back. She jerks a thumb in the general direction of the bar, tries with her other hand to smooth down her hair. He grins and she shakes her head at him, smiling as well. “I have to work.”

“Okay,” he says. “Am I still a dick?”

“Duh-doy,” she says, but there’s no heat in it and she’s smiling the way she does – did, at least – some mornings when he bought them donuts after his morning run. She steps back towards the bar, smiles. “Wait for me, I’ll get Arnold to cover. That way you won’t have to glare at all the Tummy Tuesday guys just for existing.”

“I don’t glare at them,” he says. She quirks an eyebrow at him before turning her back to head into the bar. He sighs. “If I did glare at them, it wouldn’t be for them existing.”

She laughs at that, turns to look at him over her shoulder. She looks rather proud of herself. “I know that.”

Jeff grins after her and only has to wait two minutes for Britta to join him in the parking lot. At his look, she shrugs, explains that Arnold is apparently a romantic. She accompanies that with an eye roll.

“So,” she says. He nods at that.

“So,” he echos.

If she looks a little nervous, he has no room to comment on that. He is too, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me about this/season four/general Jeff+Britta/anything on tumblr @masonjo


End file.
